In June 2026, Whatcom Transportation Authority will be implementing service changes to routes serving south Bellingham, Fairhaven and Western Washington University.
The changes focus on WTA’s plan to improve their transit system by simplifying routes to make it easier for new riders to navigate, creating more flexibility for a shifting demand of riders and ensuring buses are on time consistently.
“We're not going to be at 100%, but we can certainly do better,” said Tim Wilder, WTA’s planning director. “Part of that is adjusting our run times to account for those heavy boarding times where it's very congested.”
A major focus of the service changes is the routes that go through Western. The current blue line, a combination of six overlapping routes, will now only have route 190, which goes through campus every 15 minutes.
Route 90, a new route dubbed the “Viking circulator,” will circle Western’s campus to help route 190 meet the demand spikes as well as provide simplified and consistent routing from Bill McDonald at Samish to Billy Frank Jr. at Holly Street.
“This is going to replace all of the buses that have an ‘S’ right now,” said Andrea Reiter, Western’s associate director of active transportation.
Other new routes include route 5 servicing Old Fairhaven Parkway to Samish Way, route 6 servicing the Puget and York Neighborhoods and route 7, which would service Samish Way to 32nd Street.
WTA is also implementing transfer points in three locations: Bill McDonald at Samish, Bill McDonald at the Wade King Student Recreation Center and the Bellingham Station. These locations would help facilitate transfers from the routes 5, 6 and 7 to the 190.
“If you're in the Puget or York neighborhoods, you wouldn't be able to have that one-seat ride if you're going to campus,” Wilder said.
During the summertime, when Western’s campus is mostly empty, WTA plans on reducing the frequency of route 190 to three trips an hour, making it so every 20 minutes, route 190 will come through campus.
“They're empty, so we have a lot of buses going through, maybe not enough at some times and too many at other times, right?” Wilder said. “That's because we have a set schedule for our routes, and we don't like to change every route, because then it's not predictable. But it leads to a problem when we're spending money where we shouldn't and not enough when we should.”
Wilder encouraged Bellingham residents to give feedback after these service changes take place, as well as to reach out to WTA with questions on these service changes. If you want to reach WTA or look at these upcoming changes and more, you can through their website.
“Day one, it may be difficult, because things are changing and change is hard,” Wilder said. “But try it out and see if it works, and we'll work together to optimize the service and to make changes as needed.”
Bodey Mitchell (he/him) is a campus life reporter for The Front this quarter. He is a second-year Journalism pre-major. In his spare time, Bodey can be found snowboarding or playing guitar. You can reach him at bodeymitchell.thefront@gmail.com.
